Virtual Methodist

I post this, in part, by way of a thank you to my mother in law, 20 years down the line.  It's an adaptation of something I wrote for the Methodist Newsletter for December and shared with our own congregation last Sunday as part of our Home Missions Service, but anyone who has been listening to me over the past 20 years or following this blog in more recent years, will have heard/seen bits of it before. I make no apology for that... It is too important to say once, and I will say it again... Twenty years ago, when I was a mere ministerial student helping out at Sydenham Methodist, my mother in law gave me an early Christmas present that not only helped me in an emergency, but has also helped shape my ministry from that day. She had arrived on the Friday before Christmas, but early the following Sunday morning I got a phone call  saying that Brian Fletcher, the minister at the time, had taken ill and asking me to speak at the two services that day… Since I was only a st...

This summer we spent our holiday in London, where I realised, yet again, how heavily our high streets are dominated by franchises... especially food and drink ones. I think that within central London, apart from in the parks, it must be impossible to go more than 100 yards without a Mega-Bucks, Cafe Nero and/or Pret hoving into view... and often you can see one Starbucks from the doorway of another... As such it's a bit like churches in Belfast... Not only are there more pew places in Belfast than could conceivably be filled by its citizens, even if there was wholesale revival and an obesity epidemic that resulted in mega-sized gluteus maximi... but they are often arranged in clumps... And not just the Christ-shaming juxtaposition of different denominational mausoleums next to each other, announcing to the wider world that these Christians really don't love one another... but the insane proximity of buildings belonging to the same denomination. Sometimes they are due ...

Some readers of this blog and others who know me, probably know by now that I am not a fan of one-size-fits-all programmes, whether they be about church growth, personal development, community engagement or anything else. One of the reasons for that is that I am increasingly convinced that such programmes over-value the product over the process. In their original context they probably worked because the process was one which took the context into consideration, but care must be taken when employing such a programme that they are appropriately tailored for a new setting... Better still, learn from the principles of the programme but develop something much more organic in situ. You don't have to reinvent the wheel, and perhaps (as I have done) can use off the peg programmes for specific short-term goals, but don't forget that the long term journey is a vital part of discipleship... Which brings me to the book that our church book-group has been looking at since before Christmas.....

Whilst out and about on Wednesday afternoon, I heard that councils in England and Wales have been "banned" from using 200 words and phrases most generously referred to as "jargon" and by others as "gobbledegook." My particular favourite is "Predictors of beaconicity" which, even as someone who is relatively fluent in jargon and gobbledegook, is a mystery to me. The following is the complete list. See if you can spot any of your favourites... or would you like to add any?: Across-the-piece; Actioned; Advocate; Agencies; Ambassador; Area based; Area focused; Autonomous; Baseline; Beacon; Benchmarking; Best Practice; Blue sky thinking; Bottom-Up; CAAs; Can do culture; Capabilities; Capacity; Capacity building; Cascading; Cautiously welcome; Challenge; Champion; Citizen empowerment; Client; Cohesive communities; Cohesiveness; Collaboration; Commissioning; Community engagement; Compact; Conditionality; Consensual; Contestability; Contextual; Core deve...